Going to War with Trump and Rubio

No doubt the two most inexperienced politicians have decided the US needs a war in the Middle East. Neither have an understanding of the military. Neither served in any service I am aware of today. Both have egos bigger than they are. And they are willing to risk it all and you as long as they are not involved.

What are you paying for gasoline these days? A patriotic oil industry is cashing in on the opportunity to make a buck or two, or three . . .

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“Mark Weisbrot’s Columns,” CEPR

(Los Angeles Times) “Trump’s War in Iran Is Already Hurting Him at Home”

Note: This op-ed was updated by the Los Angeles Times from the online publication of March 5, 2026 for the print edition on March 9.

Soon after the US and Israel began bombing Iran, the New York Times reported that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel walked into the Oval Office on the morning of Feb. 11, determined to keep the American president on the path to war.”

This was not commentary or speculation. It was the unambiguous finding of a deeply sourced investigative work produced by 11 of the paper’s reporters who cover wars, the White House, and foreign policy. And their research indicated that Netanyahu likely had some influence over Trump’s decision to ditch diplomatic efforts in favor of war.

If the whole country were to see this news, support for this war might decline significantly. It is already unusually low for a military venture that a president has just launched: A Reuters poll early last week found that just 27 percent support the United States’ war against Iran.

Last week, UNESCO and news outlets reported on the bombing of a girls primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, that killed more than 100 people, including students. TIME reports 1,097 Iranian civilians killed by US-Israeli bombings.

Journalists and analysts are also struggling to answer the question, “Why now?” The Trump administration’s stated justifications for the war against Iran — at least eight different objectives by some counts — have changed from day to day. Some these reasons attracted ridicule;

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told ⁠reporters.

It is pretty clear that this war is not about a significant security threat to the people of the United States, who are supposed to be the ones that our military is armed and financed to defend. Iran has no nuclear weapons, and no way to send any missiles, with any kind of bombs, to harm people here.

Opposition to this war from within Congress is also bigger than it has been for previous wars, even those similarly based on false allegations of “national security” concerns, such as the Iraq War launched in 2003.

Since last October, members of Congress have taken on Trump for illegal and unconstitutional military actions seven times, in this hemisphere. These included extrajudicial executions of mostly unknown and unidentified people in small boats who were accused — without evidence presented — of transporting drugs to the United States.

According to article 1, section 8 of the Constitution, this current war with Iran — like the previous killings — also cannot be lawful without the consent of Congress. The 1973 legislation known as the War Powers Resolution reinforced that constitutional authority of Congress. On Wednesday, a legislative effort based on this constitutional authority was proposed in the Senate to end the war in Iran. It was blocked from consideration by Republicans in a partisan vote of 53-47 with just 2 senators crossing party lines.

On Thursday, the House version of the resolution there is another war powers resolution to end the Iran war — led by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) — won support from two Republicans but narrowly failed. There is pressure from the 95-member Congressional Progressive Caucus and also some grassroots organizing. MoveOn.org and 98 other organizations, some representing millions and even tens of millions of Americans, have mobilized. This kind of pressure and repeated votes in the first Trump administration led to both chambers of Congress approving, in 2019, a war powers resolution that required an end to US involvement in the war in Yemen.

As we have learned from past experience with these votes, even when they do not pass immediately or are vetoed by the president after Congress approves them, they can have a considerable effect in de-escalating war and moving toward peace.

So these legislative efforts must continue. But it will take other pressures as well — from Congress, which is the least unaccountable branch of our government, and from an organized public.

Trump’s star has been falling lately. His first major legislative defeat was the Epstein files, where he was overruled by his own party in Congress on publishing information about sex crimes that he had fought hard to keep hidden. Then on Feb. 20, the Supreme Court, even stacked with Republican-nominated justices, handed him another setback. They rejected his attempts to use tariffs to bully nations around the world, under cover of legislation designed for declaring “national emergencies” and “unusual and extraordinary threats to national security.” Putting tariffs back in the hands of Congress as required by law eliminates a valuable tool for the president: a source of distraction that is always easy to present and withdraw, grabbing media attention as needed. That has been his modus operandi for more than a decade.

He is also facing some downside risks in the economy, most prominently a very large bubble in the big AI stocks, which could easily burst and reduce aggregate demand enough to cause a recession. Most analysts expect his party to lose the House in November, which would increase Trump’s exposure to investigations, subpoenas, and impeachment.

And now Trump has some downside risks from his “war of choice”: the loss of almost all oil exports that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which is most of what is exported from the Persian Gulf, and rising oil prices. And a war that could escalate out of control at any time.

Trump will have to be convinced that he will first have to put an end to this war, before he tells Iranians that “the hour of your freedom is at hand” and encourages them to “reclaim” their nation.